Digital Media: Advertisements

When you watch a commercial or advertisement for a product, how does it make you feel or how does it in any way convince you to want to buy the product? Was there something cool or entertaining in the ad that kept you watching throughout the entire thing or did you get bored easily and went back to being on your phone? This is what companies use to showcase their product in order to attract audiences to buying it, but before even doing this, companies go through “the uncertainty principle” which is where companies and industries have a long struggle with predicting and measuring their products’ success. They don’t really know how well their product will sell because we as the audience have such a difficult time being attracted to one thing because we get bored fast or we just don’t care because it is not benefiting us. For example, the agency Mekanism is one of the many who can relate to this when their Axe body wash campaign did not go as well as they thought when they claimed it would be the campaign to guarantee viral success, but went downhill when their word caught up to them. Since then, they now deeply understand the U.S. youth market and will use what they have learned from that experience to better engage their audience. There are a few considerations which can help mishaps in companies such as what happened with Mekanism that can help them better create content that might resonate with audiences. These include longstanding processes the entertainment industry has used to minimize this uncertainty, technical and strategic considerations that ensure content is made available in forms that audiences will most likely find useful, and approaches for understanding what motivates audiences to circulate content. Amanda D. Lotz, a communication studies professor at the University of Michigan, discusses these traditional strategies for responding to this unpredictability carry over to a spreadable media environment. She describes this by saying,

“Television, film, and recording industry executives all work in a universe in which they know full well that more than 80 percent of what they develop and create will fail commercially. They key problem is that they don’t know which 10 to 20 percent might actually succeed. So, while it is painful from a resource-allocation standpoint, the strategy has been to produce far more creative goods than might succeed and then see what works.”

In other words, the advertisements you see every day on television are one of the many ads that the company made in order to see which one would catch the eye of the audience they are trying to attract. They make so many of the same ads because they don’t know how we the audience will react whether it be a boring, fun, or weird ad they just make them according to the interests of the audience.

 Now, in an era of digital sharing, there are a variety of technical and strategic considerations that can increase the chances content might spread. Content is more likely to be shared if it is available when and where audiences want it. For example, there is this one cool ad that is made by Google where they are advertising their new Playmoji app where you can virtually hang out with your favorite celebrates just from your phone. This ad features Childish Gambino and an avatar version of him. The avatar and Childish Gambino are first seen to be dancing in sync with each other until it starts to heat it and it turns into it being a dance battle in the end. Childish Gambino and the avatar are trying to out do one another where Childish Gambino can only do so much because he is human and the avatar version of him is doing way more like turning into a human disco ball and changing colors and that’s when Childish Gambino realizes he can’t top that. Google showcased this ad during the Grammy’s where millions of people are watching, and they also are grabbing their attention by using a famous artist and adding many colors that you don’t want to take your eyes off of. In the end, Google attracted the audience they wanted and had people downloading the app instantly because who wouldn’t want to hang with their favorite celebrity in the closet way possible?

Though there are many ads that grab your attention and entertain you, there are some that don’t really quite make sense or that don’t have you really paying attention to them. For example, during the Super Bowl, Burger King decided to air an ad that featured Andy Warhol doing absolutely nothing but preparing his burger so that he can eat it. There is no background music, no cool background set, it’s just a plain space gray backdrop with Andy Warhol, a burger king bag, and a bottle of ketchup. Some people believed it was the best commercial out of all the commercials that was aired during the Super Bowl and some were just not into it as they did not know what they just watched. It was believed that it was Burger King bringing back old-fashioned things such as the old Burger King Logo and helping Heinz Ketchup with a little bit of free advertisement as well. In the end, this commercial had many people feeling all kids of way about it as it had no meaning or anything to tell us what was going on which is pretty much what Burger King is trying to do and get us to think what the message behind it was.

In conclusion, advertisements are a huge part of helping a product sell if companies want to be successful, but they cannot just make any ad, but they have to cater to our liking's in a way that will entertain and convince us to buy their product. Next time you watch an advertisement, think of how much hard work companies put into it and think about the message and product they are showing that they want you to buy. Does it entertain or benefit you if you buy it? Or is it boring and you’re not convinced? Try it out.